On Thursday 15 July 2021 at 18:44 UTC, a HTTP POST flood targeted a video streaming customer in Latin America. The attack peaked at 342.3 million requests per second and lasted 158 minutes. Traffic originated from 142 autonomous systems in 111 countries, predominantly a headless-browser farm.
| Vector | HTTP POST flood |
| Peak | 342.3 million requests per second |
| Duration | 158 min |
| Time to mitigation | 0.108 s |
| Attack traffic reaching origin | 0.062% |
| Legitimate traffic challenged | 0.23% |
Timeline
The attack was preceded by no stated motive. Request rates on the targeted routes exceeded their hourly baseline by a factor of 564 within 5 seconds. The risk score of participating clients crossed the challenge threshold automatically and proof-of-work difficulty rose with origin load.
What the customer saw
A brief increase in p99 latency of 66 ms during the first minute, then normal service.
Recommendations
- Lower challenge thresholds on authentication endpoints during high-risk events.
- Enable authenticated origin pulls.
- Review allow-listed partner ranges quarterly.